I lived in Connecticut but went into New York City nearly every weekday when the World Trade Center was attacked. I was home that day and watched the entire event on my TV, worrying about my many friends who lived and worked there.

Over the first two months of the coronavirus crisis, our labor-market cratered. The number of employed North Carolinians dropped by 820,000, or 17 percent. Only 56.3 percent of working-aged residents were either employed or actively looking for jobs. That’s the lowest rate of labor force par…